The next frontier for Apple - and other technology companies - to conquer: the television market. Terry Gou, chairman of Foxconn, has confirmed his company will be building a television for Apple in conjunction with Sharp. Since I bought a brand-new top-of-the-line TV late last year, I've been thinking a lot about what could be improved about the state of TV today, and as crazy as it seems, I'm actually not that dissatisfied.

My guess is that they will take a standard Sharp TV, put a nice case around it, shove an Apple TV box inside and call it a day. Oh and they will double the price of the Sharp TV since it now has an Apple Sticker and a built in Apple TV.

If you already have a good quality TV with a bad interface, just buy a Apple TV box, or build a HTPC and put XBMC and Netflix on it.

I agree that it will be, overly-simplistically speaking: AppleTV + good TV panel (what in/outputs is the biggest question).

But I think you overly trivialize it. If you've used AppleTV + decent TV + iPhones and/or iPads with an open mind, I would think you could at least see potential and would need to acknowledge that Apple already has many of the pieces you'd want from a "TV of Tomorrow."

1. Content. Apple has been selling music for a DECADE. They want: simple pricing; as much content the better, but the best content is best; are opposed to ads, subscriptions, and restrictions; they want you to "own" it; however they will compromise with content owners's desire to protect their content at the best price, in an economically-viable structure, while being fair to the consumer; which has lead to them being the world's largest digital music store by selling singles from the world's largest music store; the second or third largest catalog of digital television programs, films, books; uniquely, the largest catalog of free educational material; and the largest catalog of applications in today's most thriving market for application development because of mobile, touch technologies -- even though they've been reluctant to bring this catalog of applications to the livingroom, they are certainly "working on it"; not only are they committed to providing a large catalog, they've worked hard to bring all forms of contents to as many geographical regions as possible -- in some categories, they virtually have reached the "entire" world insofar as is legally/financially viable; they are willing to negotiate hard with the content owners and have the most leverage despite the most reluctance from content owners because of the success Apple has had this past decade.

You may not like it. It's not perfect. But Apple's content offering is undeniable; even in areas where Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, Microsoft/Xbox, Valve, Amazon, Google may lead with a larger library of one or more content type or offer a more "desirable" service, there is no other company providing comparable depth and breadth of content across all forms of content, across all geographical regions, across a cohesive ecosystem in a way comparable to Apple. Apple appears committed to run content as a business that is breakeven or slightly profitable for them, profitable for the content owners -- usually more so than other comparable competitors or competing business models, and at a reasonable price for consumers.

2. Simplicity. Both the hardware and the software will be dead simple. (Again, this may not be for you, but it has broad appeal to many consumers.)

3. iOS. Airplay, Mirroring, Remote and other remote-control apps, multi-device gaming/applications, the policies of the iTunes store (ownership across devices, etc.), and iCloud bring value to owners of iPhones, iPads, iPod touches, and Macs which is order(s) of magnitude greater than the sum of its parts. Siri, particularly used within the context of remote-control iOS devices and iOS TVs at the 10' distance of interaction could be the next wave of interaction, comparable to touch -- and it's true that Siri may not be better than x, y, or z at voice-interaction as others, but, again, Apple doesn't have the whole puzzle, just the most pieces.

4. Hardware. Claim it will cost twice as much as the "same" TV all you want, AppleTV is cheap and competitive with similar devices, the iPad is only "expensive" because no one else could deliver a product you'd want to buy at comparable prices. Many people already own an iPhone or an iPad. I won't be surprised if Apple prices it with a 30% margin, far greater than competitors, but also much closer to reasonable than "double."